Jack Barkaville and The East Valley Sub-Division

About the N.B.R and East Valley Sub-Division

To start this off, this project is a sort of hobby/passion project of mine that I've had in the making for a while, I always wanted to do something like this with fictional Railroad Shenanigans, I've been doing said organization with a close friend of mine for a bit while brainstorming ideas with them. What we settled on was to start it off with this idea of a sub-division in a small valley known as The East Valley Sub-Division which is a branch of the N.B.R that is just providing in-between operations for trains passing through Central Barkaville and heading into The North Barkaville Passage. The most notable landmark, if you looked in the distance of the image, is Warber Hill which trains pass over and through in order to head into East Valley.

Before I get ahead of myself, for some of you this may be the first time hearing about the N.B.R, so let me give you a quick rundown, The N.B.R was a notable railroad that operated around the northern territories of Barkaville. The N.B.R is a railroad that is fairly sized, It interchanged with several smaller local railroads, and with two larger mainline railroads. As such, it remained as a regional power. In good control over the area it covered, but without much of a voice anywhere else. The railroad consisted of two mainlines (north & south), and numerous branches. The North line was the largest line, going east to west across the northmost areas in Barkaville. The South line was another mainline, starting directly on the west coast and stopping at the City of Cassberg, where it connected to the eastern end of the North line. Numerous branch lines broke off of the mainlines, the company also has a mascot named Jack Barkaville who is a Railroad Hound of sorts.

The time that takes place for the East Valley Sub-Division project I have been working on is during a transitional period specifically in the late 80's and early 90's as the N.B.R makes a transition to electric signals over their standard semaphore system. The branch was running multiple trains through consistently with their EMD F7 Units running passenger services as well as a combination of shunters, both electric and steam, to handle freight for the two yards present in The East Valley Sub-Division. While it was a somewhat smaller branch line consisting of a more rural area of Central Barkaville, Central Barkaville Yard, Warber Hill, The East Valley and Sub-Division itself, and the North Barkaville Passage; It remained a vital branch to the N.B.R and highlighted the Railroads consistent balance of both Freight and Passenger related Services.

I am still working on the layout although it is almost complete considering I just have to make some adjustments to designs, make a few more posters, and add a few more props and pieces of scenery on the map. This layout is going to be uploaded to a workshop under the game Rolling Line for folks to mess around with the East Valley Branch when I am complete with these layout/design shenanigans for the layout itself.

Artistic Notes

As far as artistic notes go, this artwork is probably my best attempt at perspective, vanishing points, and a slew of shading as well as composition shenanigans. Needless to say I think it came out wonderfully since I was using the layout version of Central Barkaville Station I created in Rolling Line as a reference point and then went from there to add Jack Barkaville and create a dusk scene of sorts. I am certainly happy I did this. If you do enjoy Railroad Shenanigans, I reckon you follow my silly project as I continue to work on this as I am planning to post a few more posters and livery shenanigans, as you saw from the images in this post, for North Barkaville Railroad Shenanigans. With that said, thank you for reading this description if you did and I hope ya'll have a good night. - Midnightphoby